Secession Era Editorials Project

No Title.

New York, Tribune [Republican]

(12 March 1857)

Divers newspapers of the Democratic and
Dark-Lantern species are howling grievously at the
audacity of those free people who dare to doubt the
omniscience, the infallibility and the absolute
disinterestedness of the Justices of the Supreme Court
of the United States; and we are sorry to say that
here and there a journal, from which we had a
right to expect a manlier course, is weak enough to
be deluded into the language of acquiescence. It
is assumed that Judges, because they are Judges,
must always be in the right; that they are so far
elevated above the level of ordinary mortality that we not
only must not question -- nay more, that it is
absolutely treason to question the correctness of their
decisions; that all we have now to do is to fold our
hands and submit without a murmur. Our readers
have ere this discovered that we are under the
control of no such abject idolatry; that we regard
even that awful creature, a Chief-Justice, as a
human being, and that we do not mean to submit
slavishly to fraud and usurpation because the
ermine is interposed to cloak their character. If
there be any censure to bestow, let it fall, in the
name of the eternal equities, upon those who have
dragged their official robes in the kennels of
slave-breeding politics! When we are ready to
surrender sense and reason, conscience and intellect,
and all pretension to mental and physical freedom;
when we are ready to beslaver Bombast with praise,
and to write the panegyric of the little Napoleon;
then, and not till then, will we get on our knees to
Roger Taney.

The acquiescent gentlemen say nothing very
original -- nothing, in fact, which has not been
uttered in all ages by the apologists of bad judges
the spaniels of despotic courts. "This is the law,"
they say, "and to the law you must submit." This
might be very conclusive if we were Medes or
Persians; of if a judicial decision had never been
reversed, and was incapable of revision. "What do
you intend to do about it?" chimes in chorus the
whole pack. That is a fair question, and we will
answer it plainly. We mean to show that this
Dred Scott decision is deficient in every element
which should entitle it to respect -- that it violates
the truth of history and the logic even of the law;
and in our humble way, we mean to assist in getting
it overruled. If that be justice, our carping critics
must make the most of it. It is a treason in which
Justices McLean and Curtis are equally implicated
with ourselves. Both these gentlemen -- and more
rigorously conservative judges never existed -- said
distinctly that they did not consider the decisions
of the Court to be binding upon questions not
legitimately before it. The opinions of both these able
men are before the public, and we do not believe
that a single unprejudiced lawyer, who values in
the least his professional reputation, would deny that
the dissent of three judges is sustained in a way
which does not leave the slaveholding magistrates a
leg to stand upon. If we must admire and praise
Supreme Justices, we prefer to be allowed to use
our own discretion, and when tribunals differ, to
select the side which shall have our support.

One would think, to read this fulsome flummery in
the newspapers, that there had never been such a
phenomenon as an unjust judge, whereas there is
not a schoolboy who does not know that history is
full of them -- that even in English annals corrupt
tribunals have been the rule and not the exception --
that Bacon took bribes, that the Judges of the
last Stuarts were cruel, oppressive and venal to the
last degree, and that ever since the accession of the
House of Hanover, there has been more than one
Judge as heartless and tyrannical as he dared to be.
There are, indeed, the Hales, the Holts, the Mansfields,
and noble exceptions do they furnish; but
there too are the Scroggs, the Jeffreys, the Eldens
and the Norburys. The State trials of England
are black with judicial insolence, ferocity and
oppression. Is anybody deterred now from saying
what he thinks of these monsters by the fact that
they wore the regulation robes and wigs? And
must we, while contemplating a great crime, hold
our peace because those who have committed it
happen to be living?

The position of an upright Judge who tempers
the austerities of the law, and who has the heart to
appreciate the large opportunities of his vocation,
is one which is entitled to the respect of all good
men. But a bad, a narrow-minded, a passionate or
a prejudiced Judge, is the greatest curse which can
be inflicted upon society. We say frankly that we
do not believe that this Dred Scott decision, the
most important every given in that tribunal, could
have been wrenched from magistrates who were
not under the undue influence of Slavery, and
thinking so, we shall say so. It has come to a
pretty pass, indeed, if this Court, created by the
people, is to be considered as entirely above
popular criticism as incapable of error, as utterly
irresponsible. If this were so, we might as well give
up the executive and legislative branches of the
Government at once. Not so thought Jefferson,
whose name is always in the mouths of Democrats,
and who utterly denied the right of the Court to
construe the Constitution for the coördinate
branches aforesaid.

We hear much of the dangers of agitation. We
admit them; but we know of another danger far
greater, and that is the danger that our liberties may
be subverted, our rights trampled upon; the spirit of
our institutions utterly disregarded, and our great
republican experiment turn out a disastrous failure.
We confess that this danger particularly occupies
our mind just about this time.

This document was produced as part of a document analysis project
by Lloyd Benson, Department of History, Furman University.
(Proofing info: Entered by Lloyd Benson. .)
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